Do you think there's social or economic segregation in the United States today?
After noticing the left vs. right argument developing in other threads, I thought it would be interesting to see where people go with this one. Here is an opinion article from Politico which discusses the great divide that continues to develop between US communities. The article mentions a few different ways we are becoming more and more divided:
- Life expectancy
- Education
- Political stance
- Suicide rates
- Military service
- Linguistics (regional dialects)
A few questions to get the conversation moving:
Have you lived in two or more very different parts of the country?
Have you moved from one side of town to another?
If yes, what socioeconomic differences have you noticed along the way?
Are there specific differences you have noticed from one community to another?
Do you feel that you are dissimilar from those living in the next town or neighborhood?
What other divisions have you seen?
Do you think technology is deepening these differences, or smoothing them?
How much change do you expect to see in regards to these inequalities within your lifetime?
I have included snippets of Bill Bishop's opinion below, but you can find the full article with this link:
Opinion: United? Yes. But ever more divided - Bill Bishop - POLITICO.com
Quote:
United? Yes. But ever more divided
By: Bill Bishop
October 14, 2010 04:45 AM EDT
From 1961 until the early 1980s, all U.S. counties reported that their residents were living longer. Communities weren’t equal, though; some people were healthier. But differences in life expectancy from place to place were getting smaller. Everyone expected that the next generation would grow older than the one before. In 1983, however, this steady, nationwide improvement stopped. By 2000, the difference in the average age at death between the best and worst counties increased to more than 18 years for men and nearly 13 years for women.
If it seems the country can’t find a mutual purpose these days, one reason is that, each year, Americans have less in common with fellow citizens who may live only a few dozen miles down the road. In the ’70s, for example, people with B.A. degrees were “remarkably evenly distributed” across U.S. cities, according to Harvard economist Edward Glaeser. Over the past 40 years, however, people with college degrees have clustered in some places, while huge swaths of the country have seen their share of college-educated residents shrink. Places that gained college graduates now have higher incomes and lower unemployment than those that lost their share.
Since the mid-1970s, the U.S. political system has also polarized geographically, as most counties became increasingly Republican or Democratic in presidential elections. The 2008 election, billed as the end of the red and blue division, found the nation more politically segregated than in 2000 or 2004.
Suicide rates in rural and urban counties have been diverging since the ’70s. Rural counties continue to send a disproportionate number of their young into the armed forces. Linguist William Labov told National Public Radio that “the regional dialects of this country are getting more and more different.”
The past generation has produced a new kind of segregation. We’re divided not just by how we look but by the way we live and what we think. And, like all segregation, this kind has consequences. There is now a mismatch between our problems and our politics. The issues we face — global warming, worldwide recession, international conflicts — grow larger while our public lives shrink to the size of our specific communities.
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I'll add my perspective in a bit.